It is not to be confused with the short ton a unit of weight equal to 2,000 pounds (907.18474 kg) used in the United States and in Canada before metrication also referred to simply as a "ton".

A long ton is defined as exactly 2,240 pounds. The long ton arises from the traditional British measurement system: A long ton is 20 hundredweight (cwt), each of which is 8 stone (1 stone = 14 pounds). Thus a long ton is 20 × 8 × 14 lb = 2,240 lb.

A long ton, also called the weight ton (W/T) is equal to 2,240 pounds (1,016 kg), coincidentally equivalent to the mass of 35 cubic feet (0.99 m3) of salt water with a density of 64 pounds per cubic foot (1.03 g/cm3). One long ton is 1.12 short tons or 12% larger than the 2,000 pounds of the North American short ton. A long ton is approximately 1.0160 tonnes (metric tons).

It has some limited use in the United States, most commonly in measuring the displacement of ships, the volume-to-carrying-weight of fuels and in trade of baled commodities and bulk goods like elemental sulfur. The long ton was the unit prescribed for warships by the Washington Naval Treaty 1922—for example battleships were limited to a displacement of 35,000 long tons (36,000 t; 39,000 short tons).

To comply with the practices of the European Union, the British Imperial ton was explicitly excluded from use for trade by the United Kingdom's Weights and Measures Act of 1985.